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Hoops   /hups/   Listen
Hoops

noun
1.
A game played on a court by two opposing teams of 5 players; points are scored by throwing the ball through an elevated horizontal hoop.  Synonyms: basketball, basketball game.






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"Hoops" Quotes from Famous Books



... beads, And Blues of telling stories; And titled suitors shall be crossed, And famished poets married, And Canning's motion shall be lost, And Hume's amendment carried; And Chancery shall cease to doubt, And Algebra to prove, And hoops come in, and gas go out Before I ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... That of William Thynne represents him in full armour with a tremendous dudgeon dagger and broadsword, most warlike guize for a clerk of the kitchen and editor of Chaucer. The dress of his wife is quite refreshing in its graceful comeliness in these days of revived "farthingales and hoops." These brasses were restored by the late Marquess of Bath. Would that the same good feeling for things old had prevented the owners of the "church property" from casing the old tower with a ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne

... tops, and hoops, They fashioned bowls and chairs, They sold a thousand million scoops, And seven hundred stairs; And this Bob—declares! ...
— Sugar and Spice • James Johnson

... geese instead of shooting them, and he and Albert at once set about the task of making the trap. This idea was not original with Dick. As so many others have been, he was, in part, and unconscious imitator. He planted in the shallow water a series of hoops, graded in height, the largest being in the deepest water, while they diminished steadily in size as they came nearer to the land. They made the hoops of split saplings, and planted them ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... rump of a big gray horse which galloped around a saw-dust ring with the regularity of movement that suggested a machine, while a sober-clothed man in the center cracked a whip and yelped commands. Andy had jumped through blazing hoops and over sagging bunting while he rode—and he was just a trifle ashamed of the fact. Also—though it does not particularly matter—he had, later in the performance, gone hurtling around the big tent dressed in the garb of an ancient ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... did not care to move and investigate farther; but rousing himself once more, he tried again with his hand, to find that he touched hoops and staves, and that it ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... other in a secret which inspired us with mutual shame. A glorious self-abasement took possession of me. I studied to please the count, I fondled the dogs, I would gladly have gratified every desire of the children, I would have brought them hoops and marbles and played horse with them; I was even provoked that they did not already fasten upon me as a thing of their own. Love has intuitions like those of genius; and I dimly perceived that gloom, discontent, hostility would destroy my ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... until the fashion shall abate, those more solid authors that are set up in the rear of the shop, must remain during her visits in general neglect. Though she hold herself against the shelf and tilt her hoops, it would not be possible to pass. She is absorbed in a book of the softer sort, and she flips its pages against ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... hell, Bids Orpheus tune his all-enchanting lyre, And join to calm the guardian's sleepless ire. Soon from the tepid ground blue vapors rise, And sounds melodious move along the skies; A settling tremor thro his folds extends, His crest contracts, his rainbow heck unbends, O'er all his hundred hoops the languor crawls, Each curve develops, every volute falls, His broad back flattens as he spreads the plain, And sleep consigns him to his lifeless reign. Flusht at the sight the pirates seize the spoil, And ravaged Colchis rues ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... was a striking specimen of her class. Old as she looked, her eye was bright and knowing. She wore a red-and-yellow turban, which set off her complexion well, and hoops of gold in her ears, and beads of gold about her neck, and an old funeral ring upon her finger. She had that touching stillness about her which belongs to animals that wait to be spoken to and then look up with a ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... practice the very precepts which his sacred work inspired. So great was the success of this first performance that a second was called for, the announcement of which contained an earnest appeal to the ladies to leave their hoops behind them. This singular request was obeyed, with the result that accommodation was found for one hundred more persons ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... one of those warm winter days when there is scarcely a breath of cool air. Above the walls of the gardens may be seen orange trees and lemon trees full of golden fruit. Ladies are walking slowly across the sand of the avenue, followed by children rolling hoops, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Prince thought to himself that it was a terrible thing for any living creature to be dying of thirst. So he hurried out, got a cup of water, and poured it into the open bunghole. Instantly one of the three iron hoops that bound the cask burst asunder and the ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore

... each face being eighteen yards, with bulwarks or bastions at each corner mounted with ordnance. The walls were made of two rows of palm trees and other strong timber, firmly set in the ground, and bound together with iron hoops and large nails, the space between the two rows of timber being rammed full of earth and sand, and the whole surrounded by a ditch always full of water[4]. The day after this fort was finished, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... points at which they respectively abut. The extreme length of boom is obtained by two lengths of the staves; small cogs of wood are let in at intervals, half in one stave and half in its neighbour, so as to keep them from drawing, the whole bound together with strong hoops fitted with screws. The extreme diameter of the boom is 26 inches where the sheets are fixed, tapering off at the jaws, and 13 inches at the boom end. To give additional support to the boom, an iron outrigger, extending about 3 feet on each side thereof, is fixed where the boom-sheets are placed, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... March, that season of the northern year when winter growing stale has a gritty, sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet far away. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating. Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying like a mummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He felt boxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled into his berth at night it was with a sense ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... died red fer de gals; boys wore de same. We made de gals' hoops out'n grape vines. Dey give us a dime, if dey had one, fer a ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... were hung under a shelf where there were three dolls, some hoops, a doll-house, and a basin which she had used. Felicite and Madame Aubain also took out the skirts, the handkerchiefs, and the stockings and spread them on the beds, before putting them away again. The sun fell on the piteous things, disclosing ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... when the beech is green, By swarming up its stem for eggs; They drive their horrid hoops between My legs. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... block stood well out of the way—next the meal barrel in the corner behind the door, and hard by the Short Shelf, sacred to cake and piemaking, as the Long Shelf beneath the window was given over to the three water buckets—cedar with brass hoops always shining like gold—the piggin, also of cedar, the corn-bread tray, and the cup-noggin. Above, the log wall bristled with knives of varying edge, stuck in the cracks; with nails whereon hung flesh-forks, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... when they saw the well-known face. Ivan Ivanovitch traversed the courtyard, in which were collected Indian doves, fed by Ivan Nikiforovitch's own hand, melon-rinds, vegetables, broken wheels, barrel-hoops, and a small boy wallowing with dirty blouse—a picture such as painters love. The shadows of the fluttering clothes covered nearly the whole of the yard and lent it a degree of coolness. The woman ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... men and wild beasts, together with provisions and clothes. The natives at this place are especially desirous of brass, and care not much for copper, chiefly wishing to have pieces of a foot square. They care little for iron hoops. We caught seven or eight hundred fishes in the river, at one haul of our seyne. The country people brought us for sale a root called Ningin,[165] of which we bought a handful for a small piece of copper an inch and half long. Our men got some of this, but not so ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... the wearing a stick, or bone, through the cartilage of the nose, appeared common to all of them. They remained about an hour with us: we gave them the fore-quarter of a kangaroo, and putting our remaining pork into a bag, we distributed the iron hoops of the keg in small pieces among them; these were received with as much pleasure as an European would have felt at being presented with the like quantity of gold. It was impossible distinctly to make out anything that they wished to express, by ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... into seven degrees of latitude, he resolved not to hold any farther to the south, but to sail due west in that parallel, at least till he saw how the weather settled, because he had lost many casks in consequence of the hoops starting with the great heat, and the corn and all other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... down our gullets, no more'n I can stand on this sugar bole without mashin it" said a vile youth, ceasin the sugar bole from the silver tea sarvice and settin his foot onto it. "Them gals haint no more faith in hoops and charity, than I have that the french peeple can live under a Republican form of government." Said another chap: "Oh, no, old GREEN, them tow-headed maidens is your darters, JOHANNER, BETTY, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... batter of one quart of flour, three eggs, a quart of milk, and a gill of yeast; when well risen, stir in a large spoonful of melted butter, and bake them in muffin hoops. ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph

... of gabions of other material than brush have been used. Sheet iron and iron and paper hoops are some of them. The iron splinters badly, is heavy, and has not given satisfaction. If any special materials are supplied the method of using them will, in view of the foregoing ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... afforded. Salmon are also caught in the neighbouring rivers, which are alive with undisturbed and neglected trout. The barrels in which the herrings are packed are said to cost two shillings and sixpence each, and some new regulation requires additional hoops, which, to those concerned, appears a grievance. It is said the herrings must realise ten shillings per barrel, in order to repay costs and labour, but the last advices from Halifax state that eight shillings only are offered by the merchants. The French, I ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... their copies of the dresses, and the latter in the imitation of the social tone. I am convinced that if we could now listen to the conversation of the beau monde of that day, it would appear to us as pettily affected and full of tasteless pretension, as the hoops, the towering head-dresses and high-heeled shoes of the women, and the huge perukes, cravats, wide sleeves, and ribbon-knots of the men. [Footnote: When I make good or bad taste in dress an infallible criterion ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... press out nearly all the air, and forms a package of uniform shape and size throughout, having a diameter of fourteen to sixteen inches. The bales are covered with cotton cloth, held in place by small wire hoops. It is claimed that the cotton is rolled so tightly by this process that the bales ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... sins forgiven thee." The penny-a-liners wrote that "words were wanting to express the exquisite delight," etc. And—supreme compliment of all, for Handel was a cynical bachelor—the fine ladies consented to leave their hoops at home for the second performance, that a couple of hundred or so extra listeners might be accommodated. This event was the grand triumph of Handel's life. Years of misconception, neglect, and rivalry were swept out of mind in the intoxicating ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... tossed it wildly about. Little pigtailed boys shrieked as they looked at its gaping mouth that would have shamed a man-eating shark, at the huge locomotive headlights that served for its various sets of eyes, at the horns made of barber poles, and the moustache of twisted hogshead hoops. Behind this baleful creature came other smaller ones, and more flags, and litters with sacrificial offerings, and more musicians, till all disappeared in the distance, and the crowd surged in the direction ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... mechanical implement to meet the death-struggle for fresh air, all told, was one large gimlet. Satisfied that it would be far better to peril his life for freedom in this way than to remain under the galling yoke of Slavery, he entered his box, which was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops, and was then addressed by his next friend, James A. Smith, a shoe dealer, to Wm. H. Johnson, Arch street, Philadelphia, marked, "This side up with care." In this condition he was sent to Adams' Express office in a dray, and thence by overland ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... sisters was in their ornaments. Aimee wore heavy ear-drops, and a large necklace and bracelets of amethyst; while Genifrede wore, suspended from a throat-band of velvet, embroidered like that which bound her waist, a massive plain gold crucifix, lately given her by Moyse. Her ear-rings were hoops of plain gold, and her bracelets again of embroidered velvet, clasped with plain gold. In her might be seen, and in her was seen by the Europeans who attended the levee of that day, what the negro face and form may be when seen in their native climate, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... them they let it be known whether a person is ill or in mourning, or going to a festival.[87] In California the Yokaia widows make an unguent with which they smear a white band two inches wide all around the edge of the hair[88]. Of the Yukon Indians of Alaska "some wore hoops of birch wood around the neck and waists, with various patterns of figures cut on them. These were said to be emblems of mourning for the dead."[89] Among the Snanaimuq "the face of the deceased is painted with red and black paint... After the death ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... chosen Sylphs, of special note, We trust th' important charge, the Petticoat: Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail, Tho' stiff with hoops, and arm'd with ribs of whale; 120 Form a strong line about the silver bound, And guard the wide ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... in lace and embroidery, in silks and brocades, with vast wigs and hoops; which, under the name of lords and ladies, strut the stage, to the great delight of attorneys and their clerks in the pit, and of the citizens and their apprentices in the galleries; and which are no more to be found ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... politicians circumvent; Then, if business isn't heavy, We may hold a Royal LEVEE, Or ratify some Acts of Parliament: Then we probably review the household troops - With the usual "Shalloo humps" and "Shalloo hoops!" Or receive with ceremonial and state An interesting Eastern Potentate. After that we generally Go and dress our private ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... on a two-inch hat with a green ribbon and wore a white bob-tail coat that 'bout reached to the top o' his pants. Looks like he lived on water-crackers and milk, his skin's that white. The She-one had a set o' hoops on her big as a circus tent. Much as I could do to git her in the 'bus—as it was, she come in sideways. And her trunk! Well, it oughter been on wheels—one o' them travellin' houses. I thought one spell I'd take the old plug ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of humility and meanness. We appear to the Sumatrans to have degenerated from the more splendid virtues of our predecessors. Even the richness of their laced suits and the gravity of their perukes attracted a degree of admiration; and I have heard the disuse of the large hoops worn by the ladies pathetically lamented. The quick, and to them inexplicable, revolutions of our fashions, are subject of much astonishment, and they naturally conclude that those modes can have but little intrinsic merit which we are so ready to change; or at least that our caprice renders us very ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... long time taking my measure. He measured me all over lengthways and crossways, as though he meant to put hoops round me like a barrel; then he spent a long time noting down my measurements with a thick pencil on a bit of paper, and ticked off all the measurements with triangular signs. When he had finished with me he set to work on my tutor, Yegor Alexyevitch Pobyedimsky. My ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... used for many purposes. It is split up into little pieces, and used for light frameworks, which are required to be stiff, but, at the same time, elastic. It used to be used for the ribs of umbrellas and for ladies' hoops. It was also split very small and used for the bristles of brushes. But it is now becoming scarce, and other substances are generally used in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... apparel of these Arabs, are entirely like to those vagabond Egyptians who heretofore used to go about in England. All their women, without one exception, wear a great round ring of gold, silver, or iron, according to their abilities, in one of their nostrils, and about their legs they have hoops of gold, silver, or iron. All of them, men, women, and children, are excellent swimmers, and they often brought off in this manner vessels with milk on their heads to our barks. They are very thievish, as I proved to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... aprons, of dusty men with stumps of pencils and note-books and crumpled invoices, counting and checking and reporting to other men in narrow glass offices against the wall. Outside stood the great wagons laden with the white deal boxes bound with iron hoops and bearing in vermilion letters the inscription of ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... either side, right and left—three storeys and eighteen windows of a row. You may see a picture of the palace and staircase, in the 'Views of England and Wales,' with four carved and gilt carriages waiting at the gravel walk, and several parties of ladies and gentlemen in wigs and hoops, dotting the fatiguing ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... wheels! Oh, circus hoops!" For it made him dizzy to see the top spinning around, you see. "Stop it!" he begged, but Curly would not, and at last the snail got so dizzy from watching the spinning top that he fell right ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis

... premises must be made rid of them. The aunts laughed,—though I was so serious,—and tipped a wink to the girls. The girls wanted to laugh, but were afraid to. And then it came out that the aunts had sold their old hoops, tied as tight as they could tie them, in a great mass of rags. They had made a fortune by the sale,—I am sorry to say it was in other rags, but the rags they got were new instead of old,—it was a real Aladdin bargain. The new rags ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... the superior strength of solid castings of steel to withstand the explosive strain, but at length found the necessity for re-enforcing them with hoops of the same material, shrunk on the body of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... said he, "why the New Zealanders took Captain Cook's old barrel-hoops and refused his cash. Same here! All the money in this town couldn't buy this rusty knife—" as he seized a corroded blade set in a horn handle, yellowed with age. And ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... and down again to the lawn (a movement which leaves the villa behind us on our right) we find evidence of literary interests on the part of the tenants in the fact that there is no tennis net nor set of croquet hoops, but, on our left, a little iron garden table with books on it, mostly yellow-backed, and a chair beside it. A chair on the right has also a couple of open books upon it. There are no newspapers, a circumstance which, with the absence of games, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... thinking has fallen into unmerited abeyance; and as she passed us I could see that she was very graceful. She was dressed in a lady's acceptance of the fashions of that day, which would be thought so grotesque in this. I have heard contemporaneous young girls laugh at the mere notion of hoops, but in 1870 we thought hoops extremely becoming; and this young lady knew how to hold hers a little on one side so as to give herself room in the narrow avenue, and not betray more than the discreetest hint of a white stocking. I believe the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... Jails, Casualties, and Death; and then the Bars all give way at once; and being prest from within with a more than ordinary Weight, burst as a Cask of Wine upon the Fret, which for want of Vent, makes all the Hoops fly. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... on the ice edge, and on floating pans of ice, and the dogs began to strain and howl in eagerness to attack the game, and would have dashed to the very water's edge but for big hoops of walrus hide thrown over the front of the komatik, which dragged into the snow under the runners and stopped them, and when they were stopped only the menace of the long whips could induce the animals ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace

... evidence. You runs a rope fore an' aft, an' you erects perpendick-u-arly two canvas tubes, which you distends with cane hoops, thus 'avin' as many funnels as a destroyer. At the word o' command, up they go like a pair of concertinas, an' consequently collapses equally 'andy when requisite. Comin' aft we shall doubtless overtake the Dawlish bathin'-machine ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... "know the story of a girl who was paralysed. Her name was Lucie Druon, and she was an inmate of an orphan asylum. She was quite young and could not even kneel down. Her limbs were bent like hoops. Her right leg, the shorter of the two, had ended by becoming twisted round the left one; and when any of the other girls carried her about you saw her feet hanging down quite limp, like dead ones. Please notice that she did not even go to Lourdes. She simply performed a novena; but she fasted ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... the terrible haunted blocks appeared to throng with the faded ghosts of her youth. A grey-haired woman leaning out of the upper window of an old house nodded to her with a smile, and she found herself thinking, "I rolled hoops with her once in the street, and now she is watching her grandchild go out in its carriage." At any other moment she would have bent, enraptured, over the perambulator, which was being wheeled, by a nurse and a maid, down the front steps into the street; but to-day the sight of the soft baby features, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... was the densest and darkest of all the Arcades, never utterly to be pierced by our youthful eyes, partly because only two doors away were the sinister rooms of Mr. Dawson, the dentist. Here not only was there every kind of toy—dolls, soldiers, horses, carts, games, tops, hoops, dogs, elephants—but also sweets—chocolates, jujubes, caramels, and the best sweet in the whole world, the ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... their influence, command many votes; can find other means of protection; the poor man has but one, he should guard it as a sacred treasure. Long ago, by fair treatment, the white leaders of the South might have bound the Negro to themselves with hoops of steel. They have not chosen to take this course, but by assuming from the beginning an attitude hostile to his rights, have never gained his confidence, and now seek by foul means to destroy where they have never sought by ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... favourite meeting place with the wits and gallants of the court of Charles I and the Restoration. "The maddest of all the land came to bait the Bear," is one testimony; "I stuffed myself with food and tipple till the hoops were ready to burst," is another. There is one figure, however, of the thirties of the seventeenth century which arrests the attention. This is Sir John Suckling, that gifted and ill-fated poet and man of fashion of whom it was said that he "had the peculiar happiness ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... monograms, coronets and the like, require extreme care in the working, and can only be really well done in a frame. The round Swiss frame, or tambour frame, is the one most commonly used. It consists of two wooden hoops, fitting loosely into each other; the inner one, fastened to a support with a wooden screw let into the lower part of it, with which to fasten the frame to the table. The outside ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... way they sailed in a scow on Black River. They were partially sheltered from the rain by sheets stretched over hoops. At night they went ashore and slept in ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... portable furnace, (which is equally well adapted to burn wood, or coals.)—one eighth part of the fuel will be sufficient for cooking, which would be required were the kettle to be boiled over an open fire.—To strengthen this portable furnace, it may be hooped with iron hoops, or bound round with strong iron wire:—but I forget that I am anticipating the ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... when I saw him come in the door at the heels of the policeman. No gypsy prank had thrust those tiny hoops of gold through the ears; no prairie winds had beaten that skin into wrinkled leather; nor had snow-drift and mountain-slope put in his walk that reminiscent roll. And in those eyes, when they looked at me, I saw the unmistakable sun-wash ...
— The Road • Jack London

... wig. The parson in his silk cassock, and his helpmate in brown damask. Old General Atkinson in scarlet velvet, and his wife and daughters in white damask. The Governor in black velvet, and his lady in crimson tabby trimmed with silver. The ladies wore bell-hoops, high-heeled shoes, paste buckles, silk stockings, and enormously high head-dresses, with lappets of Brussels lace hanging thence ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the women of the crowd had worn hoops and waterfalls. Aunt Claudia's memory went back to bustles and bonnets. There were deeper memories, too, than of clothes—of old friends and young faces—there was always a moment of pensive retrospect when the Bannisters stopped under the old oak ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... that job," he said. "The desert almost got you a little while ago—now it's due to take that licking you were talking about. I'm going to teach it to lie down and roll over and jump through hoops. Fact is, my job is to get it into harness and put it to work. I'll be working right out there in the Basin where I found you. It will be only about two degrees cooler than hell. If that sounds good to you, ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... day, though cold, was clear and pleasant, we mounted the box, and took the vacant places beside the driver. That worthy was a rough, surly character, with a talent for profanity truly wonderful. His horses were lean, half-starved quadrupeds, with ribs protruding from their sides like hoops from a whisky-barrel, and he accounted for their condition, and for the scarcity of fences on the highroad, by saying that the stage-owners fed them on rails; but I suspected that the constant curses he discharged ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Magdeburg is a bishopric. In this city is one of the pitchers wherein Christ changed the water into wine in Cana in Galilee. At Lipzig nothing pleased Faustus so well as the great vessel in the castle made of wood, the which is bound about with twenty-four iron hoops, and every hoop weighed two hundred pound weight. You must go upon a ladder thirty steps high before you can look into it. He saw also the new churchyard where it was walled, and standeth upon a fair plain. The yard is two hundred paces long, and round about the side of the wall are good places, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... plans and devices, it appeared what their proposed methods of warfare were. Some of these, detailed in Repeal newspapers, and copied into American journals, were proposed to the patriotic women of Ireland, as their peculiar means of serving their country; and three especially. Red-hot iron hoops, my readers may remember, were to be cast down from balconies, so as to pin the arms of English soldiers marching in the street, and scorch their hearts. Vitriol was to be flung into their eyes. Boiling oil was to be poured upon them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... was caught before the clock got through striking.] At the foot of "the hill," down in town, is, or was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron to protect it from Indian tomahawks, (Credat Hahnemannus,) and to have grown round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of course, this is not the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... characteristics I have referred to. Owing to local connection, I have brought forward those chiefly who lived in Montrose and the neighbourhood. But the race is extinct; you might as well look for hoops and farthingales in society as for such characters now. You can scarcely imagine an old lady, however quaint, now making use of some of the expressions recorded in the text, or saying, for the purpose of breaking up a party of which she was tired, from holding ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... mornings in bed, his afternoons reclining on the bank behind his residence, puffing at his dudheen and watching our recruits going through the hoops with the amused contempt that a gentleman of leisure naturally feels for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... of," returned the other, moodily. "I thought I had bagged a small boy in a Lord Fauntleroy suit on the sixth, but he ducked. These children make me tired. They should be bowling their hoops in the road. Golf is a game for grownups. How can a fellow play, with a platoon of progeny blocking ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... thousand square mile of it to lunch on—but no, sir! What he must have is a hunk of bread out of Billy's barrel. Now, Billy's no hog—he lets him have the piece of bread—then the ram wants the hull barrel; hoops, staves, and all. That's too hootin' goldarn many for anybody to stand, by ninety-nine per cent., so Bill slams him one. The ram walks off and fetches him a swat like hittin' a side of beef with a fourteen-foot board. Poor old Bill rolls ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... coloured alternately red and black, and numbered—not consecutively—up to thirty-six. The last is a blank, and stands for Zero, number Nothing. Round the upper edge, too, run a series of little brass hoops, or bridges, to cause the ball to hop and skip, and not at once into the nearest compartment. This is the regimen of Roulette. The banker sits before the wheel,—a croupier, or payer-out of winnings to and raker in of losses ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... be sure he made the best use of his eyes. The one thing which he remembered above everything else was the big poster-board near the market, covered over every inch of it with bright-colored pictures of leaping horses, trick mules, flying riders jumping through hoops, comical clowns, and, above all, a big balloon just rising out of the crowd, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... ascends to "the plain." On either side of the fire is a small encampment. One consists of a small pony cart and a small hut-shaped tent, occupied by the word-master. On the other side is erected a kind of tent, consisting of large hoops covered over with tarpaulin, quite impenetrable to rain; hard by stands a small donkey-cart. This is "the tabernacle" of ISOPEL BERNERS. A short distance off, near a spring of clear water, is the encampment of the Romany chals and chies—the Petulengres and their ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... to a show. There's a good movie in town this week. I'll blow you fellows. Some vaudeville, too, take it from me. There's a pair who roll hoops until the stage looks like a barrel factory having a tango dance. ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... from her sewing and shook her head. "No, my dears, I can't. Run out and play with your hoops instead," she said, and then she went on ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various

... England, seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... horseback; in this way his mother, then advanced in life, used to travel, in a scarlet cloth riding habit, which she had procured from England. Nay, in this way, on emergencies," he added, "the young ladies from the country used to come to the balls at Annapolis, riding with their hoops arranged 'fore and aft' like lateen sails; and after dancing all night, would ride ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... said he, "it has such a venerable, antique appearance. Its massy frame and brazen hoops, its grooves and swelling lines are a real study ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... tubers of the taro but its finer stalks are eaten. I saw gourds cut into long lengths narrower than apple rings and put out to dry. I also noticed orange trees a century old which were still producing fruit. Boys were driving iron hoops—the native hoop was of bamboo—and one of the hoop drivers wore a piece of red cloth stitched on his shoulder, which indicated that he was head of his class. One missed a dog bounding and barking after the hoop ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... she came to the Waverley church on the last day before his departure, arrayed in all her best and newest clothes, mighty fine with hoops, patches, and silks everywhere. But Master Edward, who had his uniform on for the first time, his gold-laced hat beside him on the cushion, his broadsword by his side, and his spurs on his heels, hardly once looked at the Squire's pew. At ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... perform many tricks. He would, at a sign from his master, lie down, kneel, and make as many courvettes (springs on his hind-legs forward, like rearing), as his master told him. He jumped over a stick, and through hoops, carried a glove to the person Pietro pointed out, and performed a thousand pretty antics. He travelled through the greater part of the Continent, but unfortunately passing through Arles, the people in that 'age of faith,' took him for a ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... a hoop was as popular an amusement with children as it is now, only then it was also a sport, and prizes were given to the most skilful. In fact, hoop-races were held, and boys and girls alike joined in them. They had to drive their hoops a certain distance, and the one who first reached the goal received a silver coin for a prize. This coin was fastened to the hoop as a trophy, and the more noise a hoop made while rolling over the streets the greater the honour for the owner of it, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... hoops and staves, containing about a quart and a half of spirits—you have effectually accounted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... Hoops for cannon are manufactured here in large quantities. They are cut from solid ingots, and those for guns up to 24 centimeters are rolled like railway tires; those for larger calibers are forged on a mandrel. Jackets of large size are also manufactured; these are made from solid ingots, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... front door with them as they were; Lucy saved the baby, naked as she took her from her bath, only throwing a quilt over her. I bethought me of my "running-bag" which I had used on a former case, and in a moment my few precious articles were secured under my hoops, and with a sunbonnet on, I stood ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider-press's gripe: And a moving away of pickle-tub boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve cupboards And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, 'Oh, rats, rejoice! The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! So munch on, crunch on, take ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... Two men tended the three mills. After the cotton seed had been twice passed through the mills it was steamed to render the oil fluid and more readily expressed. The steamer consisted of two covered wooden hoops not unlike that seen in Fig. 77, provided with screen bottoms, and in these the meal was placed over openings in the top of an iron kettle of boiling water from which the steam was forced through the charge ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... visitors arrived. Mr. Tyers's plans were crowned with success. Fashion was enthusiastic on the subject of Vauxhall. Royalty patronized; the nobility protected and promoted; and the general public crowded Mr. Tyers's handsome pleasure-grounds. The ladies promenaded in their hoops, sacques, and caps, as they appeared in their own drawing-rooms: the beaux of the period were in attendance, with swords and powdered bag-wigs, their three-cornered hats under their arms. Read Walpole's account (in another letter to George Montagu) ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... returned Teresa; "marry her to her equal, that is the safest plan; for if you put her out of wooden clogs into high-heeled shoes, out of her grey flannel petticoat into hoops and silk gowns, out of the plain 'Marica' and 'thou,' into 'Dona So-and-so' and 'my lady,' the girl won't know where she is, and at every turn she will fall into a thousand blunders that will show the thread of her ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... and heavy. At the sides could already be seen stripes of rain and distant rainbows. Towards the morning of the third day one of these clouds burst above their heads like a barrel from which the hoops had flown off and sprinkled them with a warm and copious rain which fortunately was of brief duration. Afterwards the weather became fine and they could ride farther. Guinea-fowls again appeared in such numbers that Stas shot at them without dismounting from his horse, and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... galloped off, caught Prince Ivan, chopped him into little pieces, put them in a barrel, smeared it with pitch and bound it with iron hoops, and flung it into the blue sea. But Marya Morevna he carried ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... take much doing," Dalla said. "If there's as much excitement on Home Time Line as I think, Dras would turn somersaults and jump through hoops to get us to one of his dinners, ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... the great personages sitting on the stage. The Duke of Bolton, Major Pauncefoot and Sir Robert Fagg were not in their places as in Hogarth's painting; the pit would not be filled with tye-wigs and hoops and there would be a sharper line of division between the actors and the spectators than ever existed in 1728. Something else had to be done. As reproduction was a failure one would try to give an impression of the same thing. Impressionism ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... rooms; but the structures, inside and out, remain for the most part not materially changed from the later Georgian era of their erection,—a time when every gentleman sported a small-sword and ladies wore hoops and patches. The famous garden forms one of the chief charms of the Temple enclosure, and its beauty and atmosphere of quiet repose are justly celebrated. Here Shakespeare is believed to have sat and thought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... think that because I've been to college I can answer all those questions! I'm just beginning to study them. But the lady of the daguerreotype in hoops marks one era, and the kodak girl in a short skirt and shirt-waist another. Women had to spend a good deal of time proving that their brains could stand the strain of higher education—that they could take the college courses prescribed for men. That's all ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge, who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about hanging and ruthless, a literary Jeffreys, in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried;—only peccadilloes and small sins against society, only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops, or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux canes and snuffboxes." Steele set The Tatler a going. "But with his friend's discovery of The Tatler, Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful Tattler in the world began ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... hoops, and starch, and false hair, and all that in mind and heart these things typify and betray, as these, I say, gained upon men, there was a necessary reaction in favor of the natural. Men had never lived so utterly in defiance of the laws of nature before; but they could ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... Paris, should serve a countess. But ye have not many of them left, I think—Mareschal, Airley, Winton, Vemyss, Balmerino, all passed and gone—aye, aye, the countesses and ladies of quality will scarce take up too much of your ball-room floor with their quality hoops nowadays.' ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... "lie so many things—memories of childhood, dim happy echoes, primroses and hoops and peace shot with laughter. When you have taken your step you daren't look back. Remembering hurts too much. And so you look forward—always forward, knowing that the ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... little boys, and you have to watch your chance to get out of his way, and there is a place with a knot-hole in the fence where you can see all kinds of rusty springs and bed-rails and birdcages and barrel hoops piled up inside the yard, and a tin-can factory where you can pick up little round pieces of tin just as good as dollars, and a church (where the clock is) with a fat old man sitting on the pavement in a chair tilted back against the church ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... ferocious Persian lacked the diabolical certainty of Lola's handling. He locked all the other cats up and enticed it out of the cage with a piece of fish. He guided it with a small whip, as it jumped over gates and through blazing hoops, and he stood tense and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... immaculate Tomlins, who had won her heart by going into raptures, in one of his stage whispers, over the classic outlines of her face. This outburst resulted in Miss Euphemia appearing the following week in a silk gown, a Greek fillet and no hoops—a costume which Waller faithfully portrayed on the side-wall of the attic the night of her appearance—the fillet being reproduced by a strip of brass which the artist had torn from his easel and nailed to the plaster, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... old. She did it. Accommodating her gait to the quickening measures of the music, she stretched her legs, passing out of a rolling gallop into a hard run. Yet one more thing, or rather the lack of it, perplexed her. Attendants should be bringing forth knockdown fence-panels for her to leap over and hoops of paper for her rider to leap through. Never mind; out of her imagination she would supply these missing details when the proper moment came. She'd hurdle the hurdles which weren't there. Meanwhile she knew what to do—around and around and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... necessary to arrest the attention of children, diversified as they are in disposition and taste, it was supposed that an equal variety of toys was required for the play-ground. A good supply of balls, battledores, shuttlecocks, tops, whips, skipping-ropes, hoops, sticks, and wheelbarrows, was, therefore, obtained, and we flattered ourselves that this must produce universal happiness. In thus, however, we were most grievously disappointed; for the balls frequently bounced over the wall,—the players, not being able to throw them with the precision ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... bucket, with strong iron hoops, and might have held perhaps two gallons. But it was only half full now of a sort of thick lobbered gravy, which I afterward learned was boiled out of the salt beef used by the sailors. Upon getting into the rigging, I found it was no easy job to carry this heavy ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... old barrels apart, chopping and sawing and hammering. He laid newspapers down upon the floor and trimmed them neatly with his mother's shears. He made flour paste in the kitchen. And when milking time came he had four fine hoops all covered ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey

... gal she wore de sweetes' li'l dresses and panties with de lace ruffles what hung down below her skirt, and de jacket button in de back and shoes from soft leather de shoeman tan jus' for her. When she li'l bigger she wear de tucked petticoats, two, three at a time to take place of hoops, but she still wear de white panties with lace ruffles what hang below de skirt 'bout a foot. Where dey gone now? I ain't seed any ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... happiness more than riches or reputation. I am sorry now I did not explain matters earlier. It would have saved you much needless suffering. But the sorrow has sped like an evil dream, and you will perhaps not regret it, for your action today binds me to you with hoops of steel. And you, too, uncle. You traveled thousands of miles to help and comfort me in my anguish. Were I as bad as I was painted, your kind old heart still pitied me; you were prepared to pluck me from the depths of despair and degradation. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... rest of his company were only actors—acting. A troupe of performing animals would have been more entertaining: indeed, in her bitter disappointment, Clara felt that she was one of such a troupe, the lady in tights who holds the hoops through which the dogs and monkeys jump.... So powerful was this anger in her that after a while she began to burlesque herself, to exaggerate her movement, and to keep her voice down to a childish treble, and the audience adored ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... across, the steel rings round it were like the hoops of a dog-cart, and the black drumsticks, according to Pete, were like the bullet heads of two niggers. Jonaique Jelly played the clarionet, and John the Widow played the trombone, but the drum was the leading instrument. Pete himself played it. He pounded it, boomed it, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... wholly in mending such an imperfection in the face, in taking away the morphew in the neck, or bleaching their hands at midnight, gumming and bridling their beards, or making the waist small, binding it with hoops, while the mind runs at waste; too much pickedness is not manly. Not from those that will jest at their own outward imperfections, but hide their ulcers within, their pride, lust, envy, ill-nature, with all the art and authority they can. These ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... opened again, and Miguel, bearing the ship's lantern in one hand and a plate of food in the other, came in. It was rough food such as was served on rough ships, but Robert sat up and looked at it hungrily. Miguel grinned, and laughed until the gold hoops in his ears shook. ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the Tuileries gardens, strutting over the green turf, with their satiny plumage flashing iridescently in the sunlight. He again heard them cooing on the arm of the marble wrestler amidst the hushed silence of the garden, while children trundled their hoops in the deep gloom of the chestnuts. And then, on seeing that big fair-haired animal massacring his boxful of birds, stunning them with the handle of his knife and driving its point into their throats, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... boots and writing-paper, kettles and saucepans, little china images and 'surprise' packets. Mrs. Vercoe's held ironmongery and drapery, and dolls and groceries, sweets and toys of various sorts, bread, cakes and books. Mrs. Bennett sold china too, and glass, some homely medicines, and hoops and thimbles and skipping-ropes. Mrs. Vercoe included cheese and bacon, ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... little gun, but Struve's arms closed about her, the weapon was wrenched from her hand, and she found herself fighting against him, breast to breast, with the fury of desperation. His wine-burdened breath beat into her face and she felt herself bound to him as though by hoops, while the touch of his cheek against hers turned her into a terrified, insensate animal, which fought with every ounce of its strength and every nerve of its body. She screamed once, but it was not like ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... the surprise and shock sustained by the bear, his limbs got inextricably mixed up with the iron hoops, and he looked for all the world as if he were performing some juggling feat with them. One hoop had somehow got round his neck and right fore leg at the same time, while another had lodged on his hind quarters. He fairly lost his temper and spun round and round, ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... is not to be found in all Pomerania, nor, indeed, in the north of Germany. The two remaining rings, with the rose of Jericho, are still to be seen in the original casket, which is of curious and costly workmanship, and this casket is again enclosed in another of iron, with strong hoops and clasps. Should any of my readers desire to discover the meaning of the inscription, he will do me the highest favour by communicating the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... roots for the company, and returned on board. He then brought the ship into a fine creek, where she was moored to the trees on each side, at a place where we had plenty of fresh water. Our case being very desperate, we presently set to work to trim and repair our water-casks, the coopers making new hoops; while others laboured to repair the sails, keeping always a guard on shore, and every man having always his weapons ready at hand. The 3d February, thirty men well armed went to the gardens, three miles from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... zoolyogical gardin? Isn't it like the topknot of some fine old parakeet from Pernambukoko—and oh, Father Rainbow, the maginta dress of her! Now I tell you, Doctor dear, I tell you the truth, what I know! She wears hoops, she does, the same as y'r grandmother used to. An' the bit of rose ribbon round her waist, hanging down behind—now I ask y'r anner, is it like a wumman at all? See the face of her, with the little snappin' eyes an' the yellow beak of a nose, an' the sunset in her cheeks that's put on wid ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... whereof Mrs. Grubbling had worn out the extremities? Do you think she didn't feel the difference, and that it wasn't this that made her shuffle along so with her toes in, when she sped along the streets upon her manifold errands, and met gentle-people's children laughing and skipping their hoops upon the sidewalks? ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar: The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear 't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Give every man ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... extent of four leagues, was covered by wrecks, which enabled us to form an estimate of the loss that we had sustained at the battle of Aboukir. To procure a few nails, or a few iron hoops, the wandering Arabs were employed in burning on the beach the masts, gun-cariages, boats, &c. which had been constructed at so vast an expence in ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison



Words linked to "Hoops" :   double dribble, assist, paint, ball-hawking, basketball shot, key, hack, rim, backboard, fast break, technical foul, basketball equipment, half, professional basketball, slam-dunk, basketball backboard, dribbling, basketball play, home court, center, technical, dunk, basketball game, tip-off, basketball court, court game, jumper, jump ball, rebound, jump shot, dribble, tap-off



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